Wounded Warrior
by kali82
Summary: Tamsin is no stranger to pain. So why does Bo's hurt her more than other people's?


**Notes**: For AudreyV, who said she like angst, unrequited love, and sexytimes. This turned out to be more of a character piece for Tamsin than a romance, so I went heavy on the first two. Thank you for the push to get my Tamsin feels out there.

**Disclaimer**: Lost Girl and its characters belong to brilliant, queer-positive people, of whom I am not one. I just love these gals and love to make them kiss.

**Spoiler warning:** the story is set during and after season 4 and includes scenes set after the finale.

* * *

.

When Tamsin is reborn it hurts. Really, really hurts.

The physical bit isn't worst - although dying is fucking awful and it's not like you forget it. No, that memory comes back along with all the others.

And it's not the memories that hurt the most, though they're pretty brutal. Sure, some of them creep back in like cats in the night. Some of them burst into her mind with a fanfare of lights and pain. But the cruelest of them wind slowly around her heart and tighten until she can't breathe for the agony.

The worst part, though, the part that makes her glad that this is her final reincarnation, is the way her friends look at her. Like there's a shadow in the air between her and them. Like the months they spent mourning her have turned her into something unfamiliar, an acquaintance met but forgotten. Like they don't really see her, Tamsin, any more.

Tamsin is first aware of her "Tamsin-ness" in her eight year old body. She's been hanging out with Kenzi, eating cookie dough and decorating a wall with a lipstick and crayon sketch of mountains, when it hits her. These aren't just mountains, they're the ranges of Nilfheim from her old picture books. She ends up telling Kenzi tales of the mythological Valkyries, and the swan-form Tamsin and her friends had dreamed of, and the memories ease back into her mind like fingers into soft leather gloves.

She's dozing off, tired from all the remembering and also from a sugar-crash, when Hale shows up. His beautiful siren voice lulls her to sleep. And then the pain comes.

.

* * *

.

Tamsin is a pretty crap teenager. This is clear. Between the to-the-death dance-off (which was awesomely fun but somehow also a totally epic fail, though Tamsin isn't entirely clear on why), and the eyeliner incident (NOT her fault, and the bathroom was super clean afterwards), and the thing with the eggs and the stove and the pot (again, not her fault, except maybe a little). But Tamsin also knows she's shit at this teenager thing because she has flashes of what her last teenage self was - or selves, maybe, because the fashions are all over the map. It's all kind of intense and nothing like lying on Kenzi's couch with ice cream and X-Files.

Still, she likes this new version of sixteen, less with the sword drills and more with the shoplifting. More than that, she likes the family she's found. Kenzi's like the best sister ever, Hale and Dyson are her doofus brothers, and Bo... well, it kinda falls apart there because Bo should be her sister, because she's Kenzi's, but, well, yeah. Sisters do not think the kind of thoughts Tamsin thinks about Bo, thoughts about her hair and how it falls down her back, about her neck and the skin that looks softer than wing-feathers, about her breasts and how they bounce even in a tightly laced corset... these are not things you think about your sister.

Tamsin lies back on the couch and half listens to Mulder and Scully's flirt-fighting. She closes her eyes and imagines Bo lying in the clawfoot tub, bubbles covering everything worth seeing. Bo's eyes are heavy-lidded as she rests her head on the edge of the tub, her hair tied up in a messy bun. Tamsin imagines walking into the bathroom and climbing into the tub. She kneels in the water, fully dressed. She can picture Bo's surprised expression, how the bubbles shift to give glimpses of the beauty beneath the water. Her hand slides down to press on the front of her panties as she imagines Bo's legs caught between hers.

The agonizing rush of memories catches Tamsin unawares, and she can't bite back the screams.

.

* * *

.

Life gets complicated once Tamsin is restored to her proper self. It's not easy to rebuild adult friendships and partnerships with people who have supervised your bath time or cut gum out of your hair. But the complications weren't just because she's an adult now, or because of her resurrection: there's also Bo.

Tamsin feels for the succubus. The first time she reincarnated, she spent years trying to piece together everything that happened during the months she was not herself. By the fourth rebirth, she stopped - it was too depressing. This time around, she only cares about her missing months because they are also Bo's, and they are causing Bo pain.

That's part of why she ends up at the Dal after a long day of extracting information from a reluctant Red Cap. Kenzi's text was pretty cryptic - B is chez grandad w ALL the aqua vit - but the emojis that followed implied that whatever was happening at the Dal wasn't good. When Tamsin catches sight of Bo perched on a barstool, drunkenly haranguing a terrified Boraro, she sees why.

"How's it going, Marisa?" she asks the red-headed tracker fae.

"Tam-Tam!" Bo calls out, spinning around wildly. Marisa takes the opportunity to escape. "All magically grown-up!" She leans back, blatantly leering at Tamsin. "Anyone tell you you filled out nicely?"

"Shut up, succubus." Tamsin is not in the mood for Bo's self-pitying bitchiness. "Kenzi sent me to pour you into a cab."

Bo snorted. "Because she couldn't face me?"

Tamsin sat down. "She didn't say."

"She doesn't have to. It's in her eyes every time she looks at me," Bo stared intently at her glass. "Sadness. Maybe guilt. Distance. I don't know what I mean."

"I do," Tamsin says quietly. "I know exactly what you mean."

The other reason Tamsin is there is purely selfish: she likes how Bo looks at her. Sure, the succubus's eyes may be full of bitterness and distrust, but they are not distant. Bo is the only one who doesn't look at Tamsin as if she had accepted her death and is now seeing a shadow.

Bo rocks back a little, her face serious, and sad. "You do, don't you?" She stares past Tamsin, her eyes filling with tears. "They forgot me. Like, poof 'Bo who?' forgot me."

"I know." Tamsin leans closer, until she can smell the vanilla-cinnamon-sex that is Bo's essence. She stops, feeling helpless. As much as she wants to touch the succubus, she's not sure if it's to offer comfort or a come-on. Really, she wants both: to be the one Bo turns to for safe haven, for sex, for everything she needs.

"You forgot me, too," Bo accuses.

"I was dead, idiot," Tamsin smiles to hide the anger she feels. How could Bo think Tamsin could ever forget her? "I didn't forget, I was being reborn."

Bo stares at her for a long moment, then nods. "Yeah. Shitty." She turns to the bar, grabs two clean glasses and fills them with Trick's best aqua vit.

"To being dead, gone, and forgotten," she says, passing a glass to Tamsin. "To people looking at you like you're the ghost of someone they used to love. To knowing for a fact that life goes on without you."

.

* * *

.

"Fuck off, Tam-Tam, you fucking winged fairy of death. I don't want to suck your chi again." Bo's voice drips with venom. "Guilt gives me indigestion."

Tamsin sighs. Bo has been drowning in misery since Kenzi's sacrifice saved them all. At first it was understandable. Tamsin knows the pain of grief and how hard it is to lose someone who lived in your heart. But after a week, it started to feel a bit self-indulgent on Bo's part, what with the denying herself chi until she was half-mad with starvation. Yesterday, Tamsin finally forced herself into Bo's space, kissing the succubus until instinct took over and Bo fed. It felt like a violation, and Bo had used more explicit terms than that, but Tamsin couldn't bear to watch her suffering.

Even with fresh energy, Bo is still wallowing. Now it's just getting gross because Bo hasn't left the bed long enough for anyone to change the sheets. Tamsin is starting to think that the best option is to set fire the thing. It may be the only way to get Bo to shift her pert little ass and, frankly, the bedding is a fucking biohazard and deserves to burn.

"I've got orders to report back to the Morrigan's pet doctor," Tamsin says, hating herself for noticing how Bo's face changes at the mention of Lauren. "I'll tell her that you're alive, shall I? I'd say 'and well' but we all know that's a lie."

"Tell her what you want," Bo mutters. "While you're at it, tell her and her human-hating boss - or is it girlfriend? - to go fuck themselves."

Tamsin doesn't respond. She wanders around the room, gathering dirty dishes. A soup plate cracks under her boot. Oh, and look, there's the soup, splashed down the wall. Everyone who comes by tries to feed Bo, but none of them can be bothered to clean up afterwards.

As she wipes up the mess, she can hear Bo shifting and sighing. It's a lot of 'pay attention to me noise' for someone who's always saying she wants to be left alone. Tamsin keeps cleaning.

"You'd tell me if..." Bo's voice fades.

Tamsin glances up. The expression on Bo's face hurts to look at. She forces herself to meet the other woman's eyes.

Bo clears her throat. "You'd tell me if there was any way to get Kenzi back? From wherever you took her?"

Tamsin's throat closes and she looks away, letting her head drop. She has never been a liar, even to the bravest of warriors as they lay dying in her arms. Truth is her weapon and her gift - the truth of death, the fear it inspires and the peace it gives. But now, at the risk of Bo setting off on a suicide mission to Valhalla...

"Of course I would," she lies.

.

* * *

.

That night, Bo cries out in her sleep. Tamsin startles awake from where she fell asleep in the bathtub. Water sloshes onto the floor, reminding her of the fantasy/memory that had brought her to adulthood. She barely gets a moment to enjoy it before Bo screams again.

She stumbles, naked and dripping, in Bo's room, into the bed. The succubus is twisting in the sheets, her dark hair tangled around her throat. Tamsin straddles her, bracing herself for post-nightmare violence. At her touch, though, Bo gentles and her eyes flutter open.

"Tamsin?" she croaks.

Tamsin has to push down the warmth bursting inside her. Bo often woke with a name on her lips - Kenzi, Dyson, Lauren, Rainer - but never Tamsin's.

"It's me," she says. She shifts her weight off Bo, settling against the pillows.

"Good," Bo mutters. "I dreamt you left me." She turns towards Tamsin, the sheet falling away to reveal her nightmare-flushed skin. "Everyone's left me."

Tamsin is lost for words. She wants to gather the other woman close, stroke her hair, and shelter her. It's so completely not a Valkyrie's way but when Bo moves into her space, Tamsin finds herself opening her arms.

They lie in silence for a while, Bo's heat burning Tamsin's bath-cooled skin. She finds her fingers tangling in Bo's hair, and eventually she relaxes enough to rest her head on Bo's. The movement rouses Bo.

"Everyone else left me," she mumbles, her breath warm against Tamsin's breast. "You won't leave me?"

Tamsin shudders at the feelings inside her: lust, protectiveness, pain, longing, sympathy. Why does this one woman make her so emotional, so vulnerable? It's ridiculous and also impossible to resist.

"I won't leave you, Bo," she says, tightening her arms around the succubus as though wrapping her wings around a fallen warrior. "I'm not going anywhere."


End file.
